HEAD, HEART & HANDS

HEAD, HEART & HANDS | Available on Amazon

In the summer of 2007, I took a sabbatical. After two years of consulting—at that time under the wing of my mentor, Luis Huete, a professor at IESE Business School—I perceived such a vast gap between my knowledge and the challenges I was facing each day that I decided to spend two months entirely dedicated to studying organizational transformation. I traveled to Boston, registered at Harvard Business School’s Baker Library, selected a dozen books, and spent the summer immersed in reading. Mornings were spent in the library, while afternoons found me lounging on a wooden platform over the Charles River. Before dinner, I would row for an hour to let the day’s lessons settle in my mind. From that experience, I earned no titles, no accreditation, or even a flimsy paper diploma, as I was not enrolled in any official program. But I didn’t need one. I knew I was there, conducting a research residency in my own way.

This reading momentum—which, in reality, was cultivated at the University of Navarre, thanks to several remarkable professors who invited me to travel through literature—combined with my consultancy work in transformation—first, with small companies, then mid-sized, and now large companies—has evolved into a continuous cycle of learning, and kept me in the mindset of a perpetual twenty-year-old student with a brain like a sponge, empty pockets, and a heart full of dreams.

Two years after that transformative summer, I penned The Next Thirty Years. Rediscovering it now brings a smile, recalling the youthful vigor and daring with which I wrote, like a spirited colt leaping over fences to gallop freely across the fields. It was a deeply personal book, recounting my experiences of accelerated learning under a mentor’s guidance and, through a handful of stories, offering insights into crafting a professional life that unleashes one’s own talents. The following year, I wrote The Talking Manager, a book on the importance of conversation, particularly in an age where face-to-face interactions are threatened by messages sent from afar, akin to snipers hiding behind computer screens.

And then, suddenly, my pen seemed to run dry. In part, this was due to the increasing demands of our work at emêrgap, the “boutique” consultancy I founded with Raúl Lagomarsino, MBA, Ph.D. , which was later joined by Ernesto Barrera Duque , Joaquín Trigueros León , Juan Carlos V. , Rolando Roncancio Rachid , John Almandoz , Gonzalo Valseca , Cristina Abecia Alexandre , María Catalina Arboleda Giraldo and Rafael Zavala Batlle . However, another part of me wanted to gain more experience before writing about the lessons we’ve learned over the years while guiding companies through their transformation processes. This discipline, still in its infancy with less than two decades of history, is one where we are all learning as we go.

So, what have we learned? Firstly, there are three types of companies today: those that merely talk about transformation; those that implement a highly technical model of change focused on technological and business transformation, orchestrated by a project office; and those that adopt an integral transformation approach. This last group seeks to innovate within their existing sales model, capturing new growth opportunities while simultaneously transforming their organization by developing new capacities within the team and new competencies in individuals, starting with senior management. We have found few companies in this latter category.

Secondly, we’ve learned that transformation requires a simple methodology. Large companies often falter here, as they tend to gravitate towards overly complex solutions.

And thirdly, we’ve realized that true business transformation begins with the transformation of its leaders. I am not referring to superficial changes but to the development of competencies, the cultivation of good habits, and building the character necessary for leadership. There are more than two decades of experience here and nearly three millennia of wisdom from towering figures like Aristotle and Cicero. Sadly, these classics seldom make their way into executive committees. The tragedy in many organizations reaches epic proportions when leaders not only haven’t read these classics but rarely open any book at all—an intellectual habit that’s been threatened since the advent of Netflix.

Over these years, we’ve had the immense fortune of collaborating in the transformation of over a hundred companies spanning thirty countries in Europe and the Americas, and we have found that, while organizational transformation is a formidable challenge, personal transformation is more daunting. That’s why we designed the Self-Development Program (SDP), aimed at accelerating the personal and professional growth of the leaders in the organizations we serve.

This book captures, through the lives of Sara and Oliver, a journey of personal transformation built from numerous stories we’ve had the privilege of witnessing over the years. Whether you found this book on a management shelf or a fiction shelf, it doesn’t matter. Now that it’s in your hands, I invite you to first read it from the heart. You’ll have time to reread it with your head.

HEAD, HEART & HANDS | Available on Amazon

CABEZA, CORAZóN & MANOS | Disponible en Amazon